Hot Wheels

 Soon.













SO SOON.













With massive thanks to +Giles Cooper at Alternative Bike Shop for the photos.

Confessions of a Devastated Pragmatic Romantic

I like to imagine myself a very pragmatic gal. I deal best with order, rules, systems, and analysis. Math, logic, details, patterns; all very stoic left-brained shit, right? I actually test as middle-brained, so I'm generally quite good at integrating the order, rules, systems, and analysis of the left brain with the softer side of life, or the right-brain functions, like philosophy, an understanding of symbols, focus on the future, compassion, listening, imagination, and ideas.

I usually try to hide the fact that I'm a devastated romantic because romance and romanticism are just so wildly impractical, but I'm just so wildly enthusiastic and expressive that everyone who knows me knows better. My iTunes library betrays me to myself and I'm perpetually caught up in the emotion carried over a system of rhythmic patterns, melodies, harmonies, and major and minor tonality. Music is the greatest joy of the middle-brained mind.

Even this blog is a betrayal of my forced self-perception as über-composed, resolute, and unflinching. The combination of emotional/personal expression with the rules and order of language and grammar excites and titillates my middle-brained-ness. Most of what I've posted so far is rooted in deep emotional experience. It's the academic and intellectual pieces that are sitting in draft form, unfinished, being researched and pecked at, outnumbering the published posts. [Poetry from a self-proclaimed pragmatist? Who does this gal think she's fooling?]

So what typically happens in my brain is this:

Right Brain: "We have an idea!" or "We have a feeling!"

Left Brain: "What does it do?" or "What is the feeling?" or "That's great, RB, but what do you want me to do about it?"

Right Brain: "Let's make an art thing!" or "It's this electrifying combination of passion, excitement, and fear! We're incredibly enthusiastic about it; in fact, we are really into this feeling!" or "How are we supposed to know what to do with it? We're too busy painting stars on rainbows and crying into this cup of tea!"

Left Brain: [annoyed] "Well, we need to DO something about it. For the love of God, stop carrying on, it's keeping us from creating a strategy and plan of action."

Right Brain: [ignores LB, imagines what everything in room would look like if it was made of glitter] "Sorry! Too busy entertaining 47 possible outcomes! La la la!"

Left Brain: "Okay, seriously. Pull our shit together."

Right Brain: [exasperated] "FINE." [scowls in the corner, knowing it will be back]

Left Brain: [sighs] "Finally. Some quiet around here. Now let's plan and organize ALL THE THINGS."

Right Brain: [jumps out like the bogey man] "A-HA! Here, have some FEAR, LB! Let's see how you do with THAT! HA!" [laughs and claps maniacally at its cleverness]

So, as you can see, neither one is getting much accomplished in this rivalry.

The sometimes painful truth is that I am an utterly devastated romantic. I want to believe in everything: love at first sight, overcoming the odds, philosophy and spirituality as tools to greater understanding, love conquering all, happy endings, art, beauty, simple gestures resulting in profound emotional response.

This passion for the potential beauty in all things leaves me frequently disappointed. The bitter reality of the ugliness in humanity breaks my heart. I am human, too, and fall short. I hurt others, or they inadvertently hurt me. Fear runs everything, and moments compound to years wasted in worry. Sympathy and empathy gut me. I spend eons in private, tormented lament.

And then, just like that, I exclaim with joy over some adorable antic of the cat or dog, swoon over the backlit fog settling over the centuries-old stone buildings I admire from my porch or bedroom window, brighten with happiness at seeing a beloved friend, melt with the enjoyment of beautiful food, explode into dance when the greatest song of the moment is playing, come alive and acutely alert in my skin at the simplest human contact, and laugh like my life depends on it.

I don't know where the balance lies. But I know that the many facets that comprise my spirit are all valid and good. I just wish I wasn't afraid of my own heart.

Want.

Put your hands in my hair
Inhale
Lean into me
Put your lips against my cheek
Whisper

My head tilted up
My breath caught
My hands flat against your chest
My fingertips fussing the point of your collar
My stomach churning
My heart racing

Dizzy
Disappearing
Deafened by whisper
Death by breath
There is nothing but your words on my cheek


(2013)

Frustrated Cartography

I have always loved maps.

The consistency of the demarcation on the page occupies me, comforts me, distracts me, just a little, from the variable, topographical revolution within.

The shortest distance between two points eludes me. I scour the creased expanse, the geography of the folds overlaid on various highways, lakes, townships, and points of interest. Somewhere on this page, SOMEWHERE, is the road that will lead me where I want to be, the path to my destiny, the proverbial road to happiness. I gag.

So I unfold this map

Lines lines lines

Creases that never fold back

I want to tear it apart

Crush it into a ball

Smooth it out

Figure out my route

What the fuck is my destination?

I set it down, I stand up, I look upon it, head cocked in consideration of the infinity of intersections. I just want to fold the edges together until the Atlantic and the Pacific touch.

I curse the expanse, shaking my fist in the general direction of the Midwest: “DAMN ALL THIS CORN!!”

I play cartographer in quiet moments alone. I pick up the map and shake it until the Rockies break apart and the Mississippi runs east to west and I fold up my map into a little paper boat and set a course for the thing I fear most.

They don't love you like I love you

White flag

Okay Sunday, I surrender.

Last night my friend and I came home to the dog shitting on my bedroom rug, the cat shitting in a dark corner the living room, which I found by sticking my hand into it, trying to find a plug in the darkness. Which I then flung, stepped in, and general madness ensued.

So far today I've had to deal with the dog peeing on my bed sometime in the night (or possibly yesterday and we didn't notice it because it was dried and dark, and YAY to sleeping in a bed with pee) and the trip to the laundromat that required, then the dog peeing on my rug as I was commanding her to get out of my room, then the cat barfed on the same rug because OH MY GOD MY HUMAN IS UPSET HERRRKK, then dragging my memory foam mattress top out onto the lawn to pour boiling water over where the dog peed, which resulted in be pouring boiling water over both of my bare feet in the process.

I managed to get myself into the shower, fully clothed, to spray my feet in cold water. Then slathered them in egg whites and wrapped in clean, dry paper towels. Now I am sitting on the porch, chain smoking, trying to understand why the fuck today is so hard. In what cosmic sense does the last 15 hours of my life require trauma by every manner of excrement?

Sunday, you win. I am TKO'ed. I surrender.

Heat.

I was gifted an air conditioner today by a friend of mine. After running it for about eight or nine hours, it's still 85°F in here (29°C to my friends across the pond), just to give you an idea of how insufferably hot it has been.

My friend Meaghan is staying with me these last few weeks. She has graciously endured the hottest summer in memory in my stuffy second-floor apartment. The best idea I've ever had in life occurred to me in the car with Meaghan tonight, on the drive home from ice cream with The Girls - we'll take the memory foam off my bed and put it in the living room and camp out there! And from whence this post is born. Ladybird, her tiny dog, is beside herself that we are down here for her entertainment.

This is hardcore friendship boot camp - we live and die by our ability to survive this heat wave together. The freezer has several varieties of ice cream, the fridge is stocked with fruit. Everything has the potential to become a frozen smoothie. I feel bad that this place isn't more hospitable but misery seems to love company and we've had innumerable laughs about our plight.

They say the heat wave is supposed to break for Sunday. I don't know for sure who "they" are but everyone keeps talking about it, so it must be true.

Mostly Parallel

Two lines

long
being drawn simultaneously
mostly parallel

The intersections
     --a history, a timeline, a ruler
sometimes curving towards each other
crossing and sloping gracefully back again
sometimes sharp and sudden jerks
     --of pen or of paper?
causing angles obtuse and acute
and some perpendicular
one fear jaggedly intersecting the other's resentment
two hopes arcing towards each other in dramatic swoops
joining to become one stronger line
and then a fork
each line resuming an individual course

Thick, bold strokes, drawn heavily and hard
take turns with shaky, almost imperceptible sketches
the proof of God drawn out and visible
in the weak and trembling lines

A vast expanse of parchment
     --history not yet written
overwhelms with its stark, glaring whiteness
the two lines continue onward in their mostly parallel paths
intrepidly pioneering onto the empty page
now knowing the direction, or the next intersection
knowing only that they are just ink drying
and always will be
moving inevitably towards new angles and arcs
with the single solace of sharing the page.

(2006)

Agoraphobia, pt. 1

So a few months ago I asked my therapist, who specializes in exposure therapy for people with phobias, after a year of seeing her, what my diagnosis technically is. Enquiring minds want to know. Because it never occurred to me to ask before, and maybe it wouldn't feel so big and vague and shadowy if it had a name and a shape and a classification. Every Tuesday is like a rapid download of the prior week's events and how I'm coping with them, so I am distracted from the "business" of being a mental health client and forget these important questions like "What is actually wrong with me?"

We have a script, where we each read the same lines at 5:01pm every Tuesday as she walks me into her office.

Therapist: "So how's it going?"
Me: "You know me, it's always something."
[we both laugh]

And it is always something. Because life only seems to stop for the 54 minutes I'm in her office. The rest of my week, the other 10,026 minutes, are a blur. I measure my week and keep track of the day by where I was the night before. Did I go to therapy last night? Okay, today is Wednesday. Which means I'm going to Nottingham tonight. Which means I'm going to Dover on Friday night. Do I have plans for the weekend yet? Will I have time to do laundry tomorrow night? Fuck it. I'll do it ___________ (I rarely do). Do I have food in my house? I should stop and get cat food/seltzer/toilet paper/gelato. I'll do it tomorrow on my way home from ___________ (I rarely do). Must make sure I balance my checkbook on Sunday morning because I know the day will get away from me and I won't do it and then I'll be worried all week. I should probably vacuum. I'll do it before I go to Dover Friday night. I wonder how my sister's doing. I need to try to remember to text her. Shit. How many more paychecks until rent is due?

It's a rare and exceptional moment when time stops for me. Because shutting off my brain is a herculean feat. "Hyper-vigilance, hyper-awareness, and racing thoughts are symptomatic of ADD, and really common in people with anxiety." I typically need some kind of physical experience to pull my essence out of my head and down into my body. "Exercise is really important to help control your anxiety; when is the last time you went to the gym?" I make excuses, change the subject, or just don't give a shit, depending on what happened the other 10,026 minutes.

Agoraphobia: Greek for "fear of the marketplace." I am quite sure the ancient Greeks had not considered what the marketplace would look like in 2013. The intersection of Route 108 and Route 101. Central Avenue at Locust Street. Henry Law Park on July 4th. Market Square. Ocean Boulevard from Memorial to Labor Day. The Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom. My last time at The Casino was August, 2011 for Social Distortion. Full-blown panic attack. Puked my guts out the second I got home. Never saw Mike Ness set foot on stage. Flashback to The Casino in August, 2005. Ray Lamontagne. I had just successfully completed my second nervous breakdown. This concert was my birthday gift from my mom. I was so scared that when Ray finally took the stage I cried, out of relief, out of grief, out of frustration, out of joy. I survived to meet Ray and get his autograph that night. He looked more scared than I felt. He's also not very tall, in fact, he's probably my height. But, oh, that whispery voice of his.

Earlier tonight. Lyle Lovett at The Casino. A longtime favorite of my mom's and mine; she's seen him nearly every year that he comes - this was to be my first. I was up against a hard deadline at work and running late. I was anxious and irritable. What if I panic and have to leave? I nearly cancelled about five times in as many minutes after too many text messages back and forth with mom about the fact that I was running late. What if I panic and have to leave? We get there, find parking Fucking Ocean Boulevard Fucking Tourists, get inside, and now the essentials: food, water, seats that feel safe. What if I panic and have to leave? Mom took approximately 45 seconds too long coming back with my soda water with lemon and my stomach was clenched like a fist. I turned to look for her and she was at the bar, paying for our drinks. Okay, I can endure three minutes, forty-five seconds of discomfort while knowing she is nearby. A cocktail waitress stopped at my table, where I was sitting entirely alone, in the back, near the door, for safety, and asked me if I was okay. She is asking if I need a drink. I answer that I am okay. Woah. I really am okay. Mom came back and I went to buy a tee-shirt and returned very happy with a tee-shirt of Lyle on a pony on a boat. Then the lights went down, and Lyle and the band took the stage. Four bars into the first song and I am bursting with tears. I cry out of relief, out of grief, out of frustration, out of joy. I cry because my hands shook while I ate seven-dollar nachos and I cry because his voice is so beautiful that it breaks my heart. I cry because I'm missing my best friend and wishing she was here and I cry because I am at an actual concert in a room full of a few hundred people and I am okay. We even sneak our way up to seats very close to the stage, where I dance in the aisle, and my mom dances, and I am grinning.

My official diagnosis is Agoraphobia with PTSD and Panic Disorder. Tonight, when I was dancing and singing along, time stopped and my essence was pulled out of my head and into my body, and I was okay.

The Wait May Kill Me

I have been watching cyclists go by my house ALL SUMMER LONG. Very soon I will be one of them. Now that I am very nearly a bike owner again, all I can hear through my open window is the shifting into lower gears or the rhythmic whur-whur-whur-whur as the stronger cyclists push hard up the hill towards Main Street. But I am aching to be among the ones just starting their ride down Bay Road, hearing the relaxed, steady whisssssssss as they coast down the hill.

I want to be outside. I want to fly over the road, my feet never touching it. I want to feel the cool humidity on my skin as I ride down tree-lined back roads. I want to negotiate traffic from 40 lbs of steel instead of 2,000.

I am sitting in my house wearing my brand-spanking-new helmet as I write this, with the anticipatory frustration of a kid who just got a bike for Christmas when there's 4' of snow on the ground.

Giles at Alternative Bike Shop says it could be about a week until my new wheels get here from the West Coast.

The wait may kill me.

My sexy, sexy new bike

Lisa Made Me Do This.

The scene:

January, 2012. Dinner time. Dupont Circle, Washington, DC – 19^th Street, to be precise. Several women meeting each other in person for the first time after developing online friendships (aah, the power of social media). 

The restaurant is called Ezmé, a romantically modern and intimate place, dimly lit, handsomely and culturally appointed, wowing diners with an array of Turkish tapas beyond explanation and pronunciation. I am beside myself with delight and pleasure over our culinary luck, and have a spiritual experience in front of my friends, the other patrons, the wait staff, and God, over their mashed potatoes – a  dish normally treated as an afterthought, an inexpensive starch to throw under a slab of meat. I am taking pictures of my mashed potatoes, making all my friends try them, telling the manager of the restaurant to thank the chef for me. I am unabashedly and publicly falling in love with my mashed potatoes.

My friend Lisa, a writer, poet, and teacher of writers and poets, points out to me that my food experiences should be blogged. That I have what writers refer to as “a voice.” That my way with words, my passion for them, my love of using them to externalize the internal, has a place in the great modern pantheon of words: The Internet.

Most people don’t think themselves Writers – they leave writing to the professionals. Or, there are some, like me, who have long thought writing should be left to the Writers. My best friend Josieda has been telling me for some time that I actually am a Writer. It has taken some time for that to sink in.

You may either thank or blame Lisa for this. She is the alpha, the source, the courage.